aligning text in an email

[mihomes]

Okay, this email is basically an order confirmation email which contains cart contents that is sent to me and the customer.  I prefer to send the emails in plain/text so there are no html issues and it is cleaner.  Here is an example of the email sent :

 

Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:41 am
Invoice ID: 5B92BBD94
Coupon: hohoho
IP: 111.111.111.111

<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
2 W4556 Blue Widgets $62.55 $125.10
<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
1 f4578f Red Widgets $109.35 $109.35
<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
1 d45789 Green Widgets $166.05 $166.05
<!-- END CARTITEMS -->

Out of stock items (these will ship separately at no additional charge when.... and so on

 

The above comes to me in the form of a variable $message and then is sent to myself and the customer in an email.  What I want to do is align the cart items in columns.  I attempted to do this with tabs, however, I noticed not all email clients insert the tabs (such as outlook express) even when sent in plain/text format.

 

So, what I think I need to do is use str_pad for each of the items.  Removing the tag lines <!-- is no problem at all and can be done with str_replace.  How the heck can I go about aligning the items though?  There is qty, id, desc, price, and total for each cart item.  I'm thinking if I use str_pad somehow for each I can insert a certain number of whitespaces for each by knowing the longest possible string length of each column.  I do not even need to figure this out as I know already what these are.  So... any help on this.  I am pretty quick when it comes to coding, but not familiar with php, what functions are available, or how to go about this.

 

Any help would be really appreciated.

[awpti]

I'm assuming it's an HTML Email..

 

Wrap it up in tables and let the tables sort it out.

[mihomes]

I'm assuming it's an HTML Email..

 

Wrap it up in tables and let the tables sort it out.

 

No, I am not sending in html - rather I want to send in plain/text as I noted in the op.

[xtopolis]

Well, a hard way is to get the longest strlen() of each "column" and pad the shorter row data with spaces... and view them with a monospaced font.

[mihomes]

Well, a hard way is to get the longest strlen() of each "column" and pad the shorter row data with spaces... and view them with a monospaced font.

 

That's kinda of what I am leaning for - as of now I am just inserting spaces, but of course, nothing is aligned.  The part that is getting me is grabbing just that section out of the variable.

[xtopolis]

Consider this example.  If you could get your data to be in the same form, you could use something like this:

(it may not be the best way, but it is a possibility)

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$rows = array("2|W4556|Blue Widgets|$62.55|$125.10",
              "1|f4578f|Red Widgets|$109.35|$109.35",
              "1|d45789|Green Widgets|$166.05|$166.05");
$data = array();

foreach($rows as $row){
  $data[] = split('\|',$row);
}
$lengths = array(1,1,1,1,1);

foreach($data as $d){
  foreach($d as $key => $val){
    $dataLen = strlen($d[$key]);
    $curLen = strlen($lengths[$key]);

    $lengths[$key] = ($dataLen > $curLen ) ? $dataLen : $curLen;
  }
}

echo '<pre>';
foreach($data as $d){
  foreach($d as $key => $val){
    $len = $lengths[$key] + 2;
      echo str_pad($val, $len, " ");
  }
  echo "\n";
}
echo '</pre>';
?>

[mihomes]

Consider this example.  If you could get your data to be in the same form, you could use something like this:

(it may not be the best way, but it is a possibility)

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$rows = array("2|W4556|Blue Widgets|$62.55|$125.10",
              "1|f4578f|Red Widgets|$109.35|$109.35",
              "1|d45789|Green Widgets|$166.05|$166.05");
$data = array();

foreach($rows as $row){
  $data[] = split('\|',$row);
}
$lengths = array(1,1,1,1,1);

foreach($data as $d){
  foreach($d as $key => $val){
    $dataLen = strlen($d[$key]);
    $curLen = strlen($lengths[$key]);

    $lengths[$key] = ($dataLen > $curLen ) ? $dataLen : $curLen;
  }
}

echo '<pre>';
foreach($data as $d){
  foreach($d as $key => $val){
    $len = $lengths[$key] + 2;
      echo str_pad($val, $len, " ");
  }
  echo "\n";
}
echo '</pre>';
?>

There lies the problem - since the entire content of the email comes to me as $message I don't know how to go about grabbing simply that section (cart contents) to perform something like this... then... inserting it back in to boot.

 

My logic is to create a string starting at <!-- BEGIN and ending at <!-- END.  That would be the entire cart contents. Copy string to another variable where I can strip out everything but "2|W4556|Blue Widgets|$62.55|$125.10" and save as an array then perform what I need to as far as whitespaces to create yet a third string then do a str_replace on copied string with new string on $message.  Well, lets see how this goes lol

[xtopolis]

I guess I didn't read clearly enough, sorry.

 

If the message is like that, you could use a regular expression to pull the data btwn the first <!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS--> and <!-- END CARTITEMS -->

 

something like preg_match('/<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->(.)+<!-- END CARTITEMS -->/'); maybe..

from there you could str_replace(<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->)

 

then a split on \n or \r\n depending.. and then you could format the non blank lines.. the only difficult is that you can't just straight "space" split/delimit it since the item name can have spaces..

 

See what you want to do, or perhaps someone has a better idea.

[xtopolis]

Part way there:

$str = <<<EOD
Date: Wed Dec 31, 2008 10:41 am
Invoice ID: 5B92BBD94
Coupon: hohoho
IP: 111.111.111.111

<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
2 W4556 Blue Widgets $62.55 $125.10
<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
1 f4578f Red Widgets $109.35 $109.35
<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->
1 d45789 Green Widgets $166.05 $166.05
<!-- END CARTITEMS -->

Out of stock items (these will ship separately at no additional charge when.... and so on
EOD;

$match = array();
preg_match('/<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->(.+)<!-- END CARTITEMS -->/si', $str, $match);
$match = explode("\n",$match[0]);

echo '<pre>';
print_r($match);
echo '</pre>';

[mihomes]

Not the prettiest, but it does the job the way I am given the contents... I did this in html so I could test it.  Only thing left is to string replace the original part with $new.  Although, I just realized that this whole thing is pointless without using a fixed width font  :-\ haha so really wont serve the purpose in a plain/text email.

 

preg_match('/<!-- BEGIN CARTITEMS -->(.+)<!-- END CARTITEMS -->/si', $message, $match);
$match = explode("|",$match[0]);

$count = 0;
$new .= "<font face='Courier'>";
while ($count < count($match)-1){
$count++;
$new .= str_pad($match[$count++], 10, " ", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new .= str_pad($match[$count++], 15, " ", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new .= str_pad($match[$count++], 50, " ", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new .= str_pad($match[$count++], 20, " ", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new .= str_pad($match[$count++], 20, " ", STR_PAD_LEFT);
$new .= "<br>";
}
$new .= "</font>";
echo $new;
;?>

[xtopolis]

If you are going to be sending it as an email... you can send HTML content...  That is probably the only way you will get what you want.

[mihomes]

Yes, I'm aware of that - this whole thing was bcause I don't want to send html content in the emails.  Well, guess I'll just stick to what I have.